Animate Shivering?
meoghanvoce_6dbbcd9e70
Posts: 0
For things like a winter scene, does anyone know how to animate shivering?
Are there any pre-made animations for such somewhere outside of Daz or Renderosity? (I've looked both of those places, and find nothing like that)
I've also looked on YT for relevant tutorials and found nothing.
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Most studio animators actually have mirrors at their desks so that they can act out motions themselves to help determine how to pose the character, and will often camera record themselves doing motions like that to get the timing right.
Something like Shivering can be quite an advanced task to get it to look just right - even a toon style shiver.
GoFigure has a nice one. It's only one within a pack, but it's actual motion capture, so it looks great.
The downside for some is that it's made for Michael 4.
I no longer have a problem with any of that. I have purchased many of those back then, love them, and so I continue to collect those few that I might not have - all because of the wonderful invention of Bone Minion. There are other ways to convert animations across generations, but I find that: as I collect more and more Bone Minions the stronger my workflow becomes - for example I have no second thoughts about buying a whole pack just for one animation, even if it's for M4.
Anyways, if you have Bone Minion for Michael 4 Poses for your intended figure base, aniMate Gesture Pack 1 has the animation you're looking for ;)
Bone Minion - Generation 4 Poses for Genesis 9
Bone Minion - Generation 4 Poses Bundle - Includes Bone Minions for all Genesis generation except Genesis 9.
Just to follow up a bit:
Yes, Bone Minion products have an initial cost to them that may seem daunting. So my first Bone Minion product was one to take my Genesis 8 poses (animations) to Genesis 9, just to see how it works. I loved it.
When I download Mixamo animations, my FBX upload into Mixamo is Genesis 2 Female Base Figure. So my very next Bone Minion purchase was the Genesis 2 Poses Bundle.
Most of these bundles were made before Genesis 9 came out. What they include is a Bone Minion for every generation from Generation 4 through Genesis 8.1 for the poses of the specified generation. So my Genesis 2 Poses Bundle included Bone Minions for M4, V4, Genesis 1, 3, 8, and 8.1
This got me to getting more and more animations and their variations (some have sliders to alter the motions) from Mixamo, since I can now translate (Retarget) the animations to any of my figures. I still use most of the generations - even if only as background actors.
Next up was the Generation 4 Bundle. I have collected So Many aniBlocks packs over the years and now I have an easy way to retarget those to any figure I want to use on the fly! This also made it more accessible for me to go ahead and collect any of the packs that I didn't have yet - so now I might just have them all.
Mixamo animations get applied to the root of the figure instead of the hip. This makes them much less convenient in the Daz Studio workflow - which is preferring the translations of the figure to be done via the hip.
3D Universe's Animation Tools - Set 1 comes with a wonderful script: "Body2Hip", which fixes all of that.
So when I download a bunch of Mixamo animations, I set the FBX format to open with Daz Studio by default. Then I double-click one, which opens it into Daz Studio. Select "Mixamo" from the dropdown. Run the Body2Hip script. Save as G2F Pose DUF. Go to aniMate 2 > Create New aniBlock from Studio Keyframes. Save As New.
That workflow ends up going by rather quickly and results in both poses and aniBlocks that I can use my Bone Minions on to retarget to other figures.
For the specific generation I'm mostly working with (currently Genesis 8) I actually retarget all of them and save a new aniBlocks for that base figure - so that I can preview the animations in aniMate before loading onto the figure. It's just my flow that keeps me animating quickly.
I'd suggest that something like a character being cold is better communicated through other media like body language, vocalization, background colors, facial expressions, or background music. I think that ultimately it just wouldn't be worth the time and effort to animate something like that.
The satisfaction of getting these sorts of things right is unbeatable. Said by someone who hasn't yet.
The segment on the visual essense of cold in the Behind the Scenes featurettes of The Clone Wars is an excellent watch.
Danny (Animation Supervisor) directs his animators to add shivers here and there - not constant - while Joel (VFX Supervisor) recycled Breath Fog elements from an earlier episode at specific parts of dialog. It's amazing to see the results.
I've just spent the last several hours advancing my journey into animating more and more facial musculature on simple animations of Rosie 8.24. More breakthroughs in specific things I can do to convey emotion combined with living facial reactions of what's going on with her in the scene. Like all of the shapes the mouth should go through while catching her breath, when she's also thinking that she might still be in danger (what I've just been working on) along with how the upper and lower eyelids react, how the cheek and nose muscles respond, to coincide with what she's doing consciously.
I have several saved animations that work well for this sort of experimentation.
Looking at results rendered, it's amazing to see what it does. While we normally won't even pick up on all of these facial movements, it truly does make the whole shot a lot more realistic looking.
In 2024 I started making special dials just for these things as well as having the benefits afforded by getting Anilip 2, which came with a slew of Augmented Viseme dials, which separate the lips poses of the viseme from that of the jaw, and allow them much higher ranges of motion. I use the augmented visemes as a big role in animating the lower facial motions that just happen without that character realising it. Lip twiches, stretches and contractions of the corners of the mouth, chin and jaw movements that occur beyond conscious thought... etc., and then I use my own dials, which have all of the facial muscles moving all the time.
Being early 2025, I wanted to actually put more of that into motion. These past several hours (over the course of two days) have yielded really nice forward progress.
It's a slippery slope.
In my earlier 2024 work, I've noticed - only after releasing several videos - that it's all too easy to overdo it or to use these tools in a way that distract the character from being that actual character. Also that I didn't like my horrible hair improvements.
Along with this new facial work, and the fact that last month's Creative Cart episode touched on facial animation while actually exploring working with Linday's dForce hair for stills and animations, I've set up myself to work more with the latest version of Rosie's hair. The latest version was created during the making of last month's episode. Two days ago I took my own ideas and techniques and worked more and more on it, which I think looks really nice, but also simulates very consistently.
Making her "Chilly" is something I've had on my docket. Perhaps I'll hit that up next - which will begin with that "Chilly" M4 aniBlock that comes in GoFigure's pack I mentioned earlier ;)
Some of her hair and facial work can be seen in the promo for last month's show:
(at this point, I'm not using any mocap or performance capture for the face. Facial animations are all done by hand)
Here's the part in The Clone Wars Behind the Scenes where they talk about the cold. If it doesn't start at the appropriate spot, it starts around 15:30
Try Puppeteer. Set up the initial pose then place a dot on the graph. Then "nudge" the figure slightly, add another pose dot. Add one more, then you have three dots on the graph. Set to Preview, then click/hold and move the mouse around quickly to see the figure shiver. If you're happy with the result, use Record and do the same motions to record it to the timeline.
If you have a slower computer, you can do this manually as you are advancing the frames on the timeline, nudge the character every few frames in random directions. When I mean by nudge, I would assume the character is standing (then pin the feet and nudge the hips) or sitting (pin the hips and nudge the chest). Both using the Universal or ActivePose tool.
if comical, teeth chattering would work well